ElectricLurieLand

John Lurie returns to Joe-Mammy.com

(***this interview features audio clips.
Click on the icons to load the audio***)

{ Click on the box to download all audio clips, .zip file, 14.2 MB }

Regulars to the site know that John Lurie has been a friend of Joe-Mammy.com since nearly the beginning. I was finally able to convince John to chat via phone this time around. It was catully done over the period of about 6 weeks. The first part was cut a bit short so John agreed to wrap it up at a later point. I’m pleased to say that both parts were refreshingly candid and he shared about his days in New York in the late 70’s and early 80’s, his work, his philosophy and why he doesn’t care much for doctors. Dig in kids, it’s a full plate.

****

Joe : I wanted to talk a bit about your past. I saw you were born in Minnesota?

John Lurie : Yeah.

Joe : How long were you there?

Lurie : I lived in Minneapolis from 0 to 6.

Joe : And then you moved east?

Lurie : Then we moved to New Orleans until I was 9 or 10.

Joe : That’s quite the culture shock, going from Minneapolis to New Orleans. Did you guys move a lot at the point?

Lurie : We moved about three times. Then we moved to Worcester, Massachusetts. Louisiana was amazing for me because I’d go out looking for snakes and things like that. That was great for me at that age.

Joe : It’s a lot warmer than Minnesota in the winter.

Lurie : Yeah.

Joe : So about your teenage years you settled out east?

Lurie : Yeah, we settled in Worcester by then.

Joe : At what point did the band the start and did you get settled in New York.

Lurie : I moved to New York when I was around 20, 21. I left and then I came back for good in ’78 and then the band started in ’79.

Joe : You were at the center of all sorts of stuff. You had Basquiat crashing on your couch.

Lurie : Basquiat used to sleep on the floor. There was no couch.

Joe : For someone who has lived in the Midwest their entire lives, that period with so much going on—I read you used to party with Warhol—

Lurie : There were all kinds of things going on. People were concentrating a lot more on fun than on their work, I think. It was kind of mayhem. I don’t know how to give a good view into it for somebody from the outside. There was always something going on. Every night, every day there was something going on.

Joe : Did it seem more like a party scene with a bunch of artists working there or—

Lurie : It seemed like nobody ever worked, it was always partying. You kind of did your work in your spare time.

Joe : You said the band started in ’79. And then you started working with Jarmusch in the mid to late 80’s?

Lurie : No, even early 80’s. It would be ’84, I guess.

Joe : How did that come about? I know you guys were in kind of the same scene. Did you get involved first with the music or more with the acting or both?

Lurie : I met him first in this Super8 movie by Eric Mitchell called “Red Italy”, He was a film student—we kind of turned our noses up at film students like they were yuppies or something. And then I ran into him at like four in the morning on the corner of 2nd Ave and 5 th St where you seemed to run into everybody back then. Then he had been given a little bit of film—oh no, first I played the saxophone in this thing “Permanent Vacation” He paid me $200 to store the equipment at my house that they rented for the movie and Basquiat was sleeping there on the floor. Basquiat would stay awake for two or three days and then sleep for a day. They had to pick him up and move him from place to place to get at their equipment. It was a bunch of NYU film student types that were kind of snotty. And they were like “Who’s this black guy we have to move from place to place.” I loved the idea that a year or two later he was richer than probably the whole town where they came from.

Then a year or so later Wenders gave Jim some film that was left over and we just came up with the idea really kind on the cuff and just shot it. Things were really more kamikaze back then.

Joe : So as far as the score work it was more seat of your pants kind of thing?

Lurie : Yeah, you just kinda learned it. Do what you need to do, you know?

Joe : The art of survival through necessity is always fun—

Lurie : You’ve got an idea and you want to make it work—let’s say you want to go plant a garden you’ve got to figure it out. You’ve just got figure it out. You don’t have to be a gardener you’ve just got to figure it out. So timing the music for a movie, you just to get a sense of it. It’s a lot of work, too, but it’s more just figuring it out.

Joe : Being willing to put the time in, yeah. You’ve got the acting at that point and you had the music. The music was at the forefront, wasn’t it?

Lurie : The music had my heart—way more than the acting. Honestly I could’ve been a movie star at that time, but it just seemed such a creepy thing to do.

Lurie : Just phony. Basically you’re just a puppet for somebody. You’re a puppet. So you get to sleep with lots of women and you gets lots of money but it just seemed too tacky to me so I kinda didn’t do it.

Joe : (laughing)

Lurie : What?

Joe : It just reminded me of a quote from an interview with R Lee Ermey.

Lurie : That’s kinda what it feels like. It’s a really degrading, humiliating thing to do. And very rarely does it feel like a creative thing. Most of the time it’s like “turn your head sideways now.” And then people want to do it so desperately that they allow themselves to be treated like… blech. I acted on that show “Oz” I couldn’t believe how they treated those people.

Joe : Any stories about that come to mind?

Lurie : The “Oz” thing, I did it as a lark and then they told me I’m a regular character like I had no choice. Then they told me this thing that my character was going to do which sounded great so I accepted. But this stuff they promised never got shot. I turned down a fortune to be in that stupid TV show. So they said “You have to report.” We were shooting in Bayonne, New Jersey. I said “Will you send a car for me?” “Oh no, you stand at the corner of 23rd st and 7 th Ave and a van comes and picks you and the other actors up and drives you out to Bayonne at 5 o’clock in the morning.” It’s like being a fucking day laborer and most of the guys in the fucking cast couldn’t afford HBO.

Joe : The magic of television.

Lurie : Yeah, really. You don’t see the cast of “Friends” standing at the corner of 23rd and 7th.

Joe : Well, give it a couple years, you never know. (laughing) If you can, can you talk a bit about the Lounge Lizards and the film scores and stuff?

Lurie : You’ll have to be more specific though because that covers almost 20 years.

Lurie : The band started on June 4th, 1979 was our first gig. I played the saxophone very seriously. I used to practice saxophone 2-3 hours a day but it was at a time when everybody was a punk so I hid that from everybody. I knew this club owner who asked “Do you know a good band to open for Peter Gordon’s Love of Life Orchestra on a Monday night?” And I said “My band.” But I didn’t have a band but we had been jamming—Arto Lindsay and I had been jamming. My brother Evan had just moved to New York and [Steve] Piccolo was working on Wall Street and he had been my bass player in high school and so we just threw this thing together with two rehearsals. It was music I was working on for a movie called “Fatty Walks”. We bought a bunch of cocaine and snorted it and we went on stage. We were in all the papers; we were the Beatles the next day. It was amazing.

Joe : And the Lounge Lizards were born. I’m not quite as up on were some of the specifics with the band. I know there was some turnover with the band, but things kind of stabilized by “Voice of Chunk” right?

Lurie : Well, let’s see. I was really serious about the saxophone but we didn’t know how to play on stage. We were sort of this punk/jazz band for a while. I think sometimes we were great and sometimes we were hideously bad. Then it got more serious and I changed the musicians around a bit. And as it got more serious we lost an enormous part of the fan base. Around ’84 it started to get really solidified and find it sound—around ’84, ’85. So actually the “Big Heart” and “No Pain for Cakes” albums, there’s some really good music on there.

Joe : Were you doing film score work throughout that point. I know you did a couple Jarmusch films around then.

Lurie : I did “Stranger than Paradise” and then I did a ton of little Lower East Side movies, then I did one very horrible Hollywood movie for a chunk of money in the early 80’s and then I did a couple more Jarmusch films. I didn’t start doing any real Hollywood films until I did “Get Shorty”.

Joe : And you were nominated for a Grammy for that?

Lurie : Yeah.

Joe : How was that? I’ve heard it can be kind of a schizophrenic experience.

Lurie : No, it was nothing. It was like going to a high school auditorium and watching your principal speak. It was ridiculous.

And I had a gig that night so my thing was at 7 o’clock. I dunno I’m leery of all that stuff, you know? I mean, I watch award shows from time to time and then I get a little jealous. It’s like “I’m better than him,” but basically that has nothing to do with anything, you know?

Joe : Yeah, I guess that’s the first time I’ve heard it likened to a high school auditorium.

Lurie : Well that’s really what it felt like. It was like “Okay, stand over here; you thirty people move over here,” it was like what the fuck? They hire all these people to fill in to sit in the chairs who aren’t part of it so it doesn’t look empty, you know. They do that. All those people dancing at the MTV Music Awards and shit like that, they’re all hired to dance there. It’s nuts. It’s like a baseball team hiring their audience.

Joe : Well, I can name a few teams where they would probably help out a bit. I guess it’s safe to say that at this point you’re a man without many illusions.

Lurie : No. I’m still really naïve about things work and how they should work. Everyone knows how they should work. Then it’s like the creepiest people get ahead. You see a movie, you see a piece of art, you hear a record and it’s like God knows what kind of creepiness was dealt with to get that thing out. It should just be this thing that just flows out. And there’s so many people who are involved who have no business being involved at all. The people in our culture now who have made it—like in that early period, they were the bottom of the list—the David Byrne’s, the Jim Jarmusch’s, the Tom Cruise’s, they were the kid who would bring the teacher an apple. There would be a math genius sitting next to you, he would get nowhere. He might blow up the school but that would be the extent of his accomplishment. But that person that knew how to play the whole thing for themselves—but it had nothing to do with talent. And that bothers me, you know?

Joe : Yeah. And it hasn’t changed in the last—

Lurie : No, it’s worse now.

Joe : With the whole Paris Hilton phenomena—

Lurie : I have nothing to do with it. I know she got arrested. I don’t want to know, I just don’t want to know. If you do not recognize her then she has nothing. If there is a video of her blowing Ron Jaworski, I don't want to see it.

Joe : One thing I’m curious about, you’ve worked with some pretty impressive names. Do you have any recollections—for instance I wonder what a day on the set with David Lynch would be.

Lurie : Well, I didn’t do much work on that. Willem [Dafoe] was in it and I read the script. The script was so beautiful, that script. You know he’s a very jolly, easy-going guy, kind of delighted with stuff. At that time, that TV show was on and he was being hailed as a genius and I think he went too far with that movie. But he’s an interesting guy. Very smart.

Joe : Yeah, I’ve seen interviews with him and he’s obviously a pretty bright guy, it just seems sometimes he’s on his own wavelength and he doesn’t care that he’s on his own wavelength.

Lurie : I like that about him. But you are right; he is indulgent and doesn’t seem to have any discernment any more.

Joe : Yeah. He’s on the list that if there was a second season of “Fishing with John” I’d love to see him on it.

Lurie : He’d probably be good. That wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Joe : You worked with Jarmusch. You worked with Scorsese.

Lurie : Yeah. He was a hero of mine. “ Mean Streets” “Raging Bull” and “Taxi Driver” were some of my favorite movies, but that was actually kind of—you work with a hero and you walk away going “He’s a little dope,” you know? That was not a comfortable experience working on “Last Temptation…” but it was amazing being in Morocco for all that time. I loved that. I met great musicians there.

Joe : That’s got to be a bonus just being able to go out and absorb some of the stuff around you.

Lurie : Travel has been enormous for me: Africa, Morocco, Thailand. Those things have been great for me. I mean, America, I don’t know what’s wrong with us here.

Joe : I know it changes from each experience, are there any places that you visited that just blew your mind?

Lurie : Morocco is like landing on another planet. And some places in the east are like that too. It’s like “Oh my God, this is all different.”

Joe : Then you figured out how to write off some of your travel—how did the line go, you were able to write off the taxes for your fishing trips on “Fishing with John”?

Lurie : I was half-thinking about doing a fishing show but every time I’d take a vacation I’d shoot what we said would be the pilot. So we’d say we’d write taxes off my vacations.

Joe : Even though the tagline for the show said you knew nothing about fishing, you’d done quite a bit of it—

Joe : The last couple of times we talked the diagnosis has shifted a bit. The first time we talked it was Lyme disease, the next time they weren’t so sure—

Lurie : Well, it’s probably Lyme disease. It depends on who I believe. It’s MS; it’s an auto-immune disorder. I’ve had 30 different diagnoses. It’s a rare form of migraines. It’s a rare seizure disorder. Who knows? They don’t know what they’re fucking talking about.

Joe : You’re your own episode of “House, MD”

Lurie : Yeah, I watched that show once. I laughed so hard about a group of doctors sitting around talking about a patient, like “let’s figure this out.” That never happened. That never happened. I know a lot about the medical world at this point. They might sit around to figure out how they can get out early on Tuesday to go play golf but they don’t fucking sit around trying to figure out a diagnosis.

I went to the Mayo Clinic; it was like going to the registry of motor vehicles to get a diagnosis. Those people, they gotta be fucking stopped. My brother’s boyfriend broke his hip and they called the doctor at 9 o’clock in the morning before he went into surgery and he started screaming “My office hours haven’t started yet. How dare you call me this early!” Then he went in and he had a heart attack because they didn’t know about this heart valve thing he had. The amazing thing of the whole fucking thing was that the doctor came out who did the hip surgery and told my brother “The operation was a complete success” and walked away. Didn’t mention that he had a heart attack and he might die in the next 24 hours, but his hip—he did his job correctly.

People think they get sick they’re going to fix it. These people are horrifying. They’re arrogant, incompetent; a lot of them are flat out crooks. Anybody who’s dealt with it knows. It’s got to be stopped. I was a junkie in the early 80’s in New York City. Most of the people I knew were either junkies or gay—promiscuous gay men. In my life, I’m 54 now, of the people I know who have died—so you’re a promiscuous gay man in the 80’s or you’re a heroine addict, those are supposed to be multi-high risk things—70% of the people I know have been killed by doctors: too much chemotherapy, they spill their appendix back into their body, they’re told the pain in their back is psychosomatic and it turns out to be cancer, I could go on forever. So when you fucking meet a doctor and he comes to a dinner party, he shouldn’t come in all arrogant and say “I’m a doctor”, he should go “I’m sorry, I’m a doctor, we’re doing the best we can.”

How did we get started on this?

Joe : We were talking about your initial diagnosis.

Lurie : Oh. So I don’t really know. All the Lyme’s disease guys say absolutely 100% it’s Lyme’s disease. All the neurologists say that’s a bullshit diagnosis, it doesn’t exist. Something has made me a little better in the last five years, but I don’t know what. So I’ve stopped seeing them, I dunno. I’ve stopped going.

Joe : But you say you’ve been doing better over the last five years?

Lurie : I haven’t been good over the last two months or so, but I’m better than I was four years ago when I couldn’t, you know…

Joe : Well, I’m glad for that at least. Since then you’ve retired from the music and pursued art.

Lurie : I’m painting, yeah.

Joe : One thing I wanted to ask you the exhibit in Vermont, the eBay exhibit?

Lurie : That thing? Yeah.

Joe : They gave you a thousand dollars and had you to put something together using stuff from eBay?

Lurie : Yeah, they did me and Seinfeld and Bianca Jagger and I don’t know who else. They gave us all $1000 to buy something on eBay and that’s their exhibit. And so I just gave them some of my prints.

Joe : Did you get them off eBay?

Lurie : (laughs) Yeah I put them for sale on eBay and then I bought them.

Joe : Can you write that off on your taxes, too?

Lurie : No, because I made $1000 on them. (laughs) But these prints are absolutely beautiful. You don’t know until you see them in person.

Joe : Which ones did you include with that?

Lurie : I gave them “Of Course Animals Have Souls” and “Dog is Blind, Who Will Help”

Joe : The “Dog is Blind…” I like a lot. I wanted to make sure I mentioned the book, “Learn to Draw: Volume One”. It’s out, after much delay.

Lurie : Oh God yeah. Blech.

Joe : I’ve got a copy of it, and I’m pretty fond of it.

Lurie : It’s good, no?

Joe : Yeah I like the work a lot. You have a good eye and it’s got that really dark sense of humor that appeals to me. The Atlantic City one makes me laugh.

Lurie : Who knows? I don’t speak to them. They’re just hopeless. I don’t’ have any idea. I don’t think it’s that findable. They’re snotty art people.

Joe : So the more successful it is, the harder it is to find?

Lurie : Yeah, they want it to be a rare object. Blech.

Joe: (laughs) That guttural sound seems to be your analysis of snobbery—

Lurie: Of the art world and the medical world? That’s probably true.

Joe : Are there any plans for a “Volume 2”?

Lurie : Yeah, but not with that company. I could do another one. I’m going to do a color book that comes out.

Joe : Like an actual coloring book?

Lurie : No, no, no. A book of the paintings, not black and white.

Joe : Well, if you did a coloring book, that would be awesome—put the little numbers in there…

Lurie : Yeah, that might be fun.

Joe : One thing I think would be cool if you did kind of a children’s book for adults. Your work lends itself to kind of a twisted storybook kind of feel.

Lurie : Yeah, a lot of people have suggested that.

Joe : Do you have any interest in writing fiction? I know you’ve been working on your memoirs.

Lurie : You know I don’t know if I feel like doing anything at the moment. I’m run down, you know what I mean? I’m pretty beaten up and every art form seems to be filled with creepy fucking people between you and the people who want to read it/hear it/see it, whatever. I just don’t have the strength with my body like it is. So I haven’t been doing anything lately. Sorry to be so depressing.

Joe : I understand, probably not to the extent that you’ve got. For me it gets to the point where I enjoy doing it for myself—

Lurie : That’s what you gotta do. I’m exhausted or something, I dunno.

Part II

-A little background, John was commenting that he had received his copy of “All the Stupid Little Children” a collection of short stories I had written that John had graciously lent his artwork for. -Joe

Lurie : The book is kinda great. I didn’t really read it, read it, but I poked around at it. It’s nice.

Joe : That’s what it’s best for, poking around a bit. Any favorites?

Lurie : Mm. No, but I just like the style of it. It’s pleasant to read and it draws you in, in a nice way. I hope it does well for you.

Joe : Thank you. I hope it does too—

Lurie : I don’t know how you get anyone’s attention these days.

Joe : I could set myself on fire. That might work for about 30 seconds or so.

Lurie : I had a friend Banger Benvenuti who was actually kind of a really good painter and he was promised a review—this was like in 1980—by the SoHo Weekly News, which at the time was neck and neck with the Village Voice for the most powerful of the cultural New York magazines. They promised him a review and didn’t give him one and he walked in with an axe and cut off his thumb at the woman’s desk who promised him. And he was never heard from again.

Joe : He cut off his thumb!?!

Lurie : Yeah.

Joe : That’s amazing and horrifying all at once.

Lurie : He was a lovely little guy, too. I wonder where the fuck he is. Are you recording this? You should definitely put that in.

Joe : Oh yeah, that’s definitely going in.

Lurie : He was really a lovely guy and he was a good painter. When I watch all these phonies… It’s really weird to have been in the Lower East Side in the late 70’s and early 80’s when the people who were really talented and on fire, they got nowhere. All of the kind of people who would bring the teacher an apple, they're the ones who got ahead.

Joe : If they ever work out a solution for that in life, it would be cool.

Lurie : I know. It always seems like the worst people rise to the top. Look at our president.

Joe : (laughs) I don’t know. On some level I like to think that the passion you have for doing something counter balances the fact no one seems to care.

Lurie : Yeah. I also play for play chips, I do both. It seems like once you play for money they won’t let you win play chips anymore because I can’t win the play chips against horrible players. I can’t win.

Joe : Well, there’s more of the horrible ones than you. I think it’s statistics, kind of reverse Darwinism. They might not be better than you but there’s so many of them that you’re at a disadvantage. Anyway, along those lines of getting burned out—although it’s not really burned out in your case—

Lurie : Well, I’m not well. I’m not well to the point where I can’t usually make myself breakfast. So I don’t have the strength to defend myself now against the capriciousness of whoever—the TV station, the record company, the movie company, the gallery. I can’t defend myself anymore so I’ve kind of just withdrawn. It takes a pretty warrior-like nature to protect your work and to get it done properly.

Joe : For me it’s to the point where I enjoy what I do, but if everything else sucks—the right kind of energy isn’t there, I’ll put it that way.

Lurie : When I got sick and I was stuck in this apartment I was making these paintings and it really felt like I was the edge of maybe not living much longer I thought this is what I’m leaving behind. But then it seems like humans aren’t going to be around that much longer anyways so why even do this? But I guess that’s depression talking, I don’t know.

Joe : I don’t know, but for some reason mass extinction makes me giggle. So do you still do any of the painting?

Lurie : I haven’t been doing it.

Joe : Do you have any particular impetus to get back into it, even for yourself?

Lurie : Look, I’m stuck in this apartment. I was painting in the laundry room and then at my breakfast table. Now there’s so many paintings in here it’s like I’m living in a storage facility. If I make more, it’s just like I’m adding to the clutter of what I’m living with so I’ve just stopped. This is maybe naïve and babyish of me, but I really feel like I’ve done enough work that was landmark things in different fields and I’m doing these paintings and I’m ill. I just sort of feel somebody should come along and help me at this point. But maybe that is ridiculous. Clearly it is ridiculous.

Joe : Are you looking for people to get the word out or?

Lurie : I gotta tell you, there are days where I have no food and I’m sitting here with dishes that I can’t clean. The phone rings and it’s somebody who wants to use my music for free in their movie and then somebody wants to borrow money and then somebody wants a painting that they can auction off to save their gallery. I don’t even understand anymore.

Joe : Yeah… that sucks. Some days I wish I had better words for it.

Lurie : It just makes me sad. I’m not even angry or bitter anymore. I’ve sort of proven that I’ve got the goods; you would think I would get some help from somewhere. Then I hire these people who rip me off and don’t do what they’re supposed to.

Lurie : Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t mean to sound so grim, but it’s been a really hard time for me.

Joe : Well, if that’s where you’re at, I don’t want you to dress it up or anything.

Lurie : And I’m not going to.

Joe : So, if you were in a teaching mode, what advice would you give someone looking to get into music, or into art?

Lurie : I don’t have a clue. I think you have to do it for the reason you do it for. I was visiting this friend of mine. We went out and I was actually okay and we went to a restaurant and afterwards I felt still okay, which is rare. I get about an hour or two when I can do stuff. We walked over to this auditorium and there was this gospel choir singing. It was the first music I’d seen live since I got sick. It was so cool to see these people who were singing for the joy of singing and for singing to their idea for what God is and for no other reason than it was a great thing to do. Oh my God, it opened my heart and it made me happy. Rather than seeing some band that can barely play but has 9,000 MySpace notices going out, you know what I mean?

Joe : Yeah, the sense of celebration.

Lurie : Yeah. So my advice is: do it for the right reason. Don’t try and get ahead just do it and make it better and make it better and make it better. I believe it’s a fallacy that if you do something that’s really great that the world will eventually find it, but still if they do—it’s just like hiding a treasure in the woods and then somebody finds it. Just do it for the right reason and walk on it hard. Then maybe somebody someday will walk in and see this thing you’re making and they’ll be moved to tears, you know?

Joe : In a perfect world.

Lurie : Not even. Just do it for the right reasons.

Joe : I’ve lost my train of my thought now (chuckles)

Lurie : They’re always asking me for advice for the young creative types.

Joe : I figure a grim word of warning or a little nudge in the shoulder couldn’t hurt because life catches up with them pretty fast. That and on some level, and not to be a brown-noser, you’ve done it.

Lurie : I’ve been around. I’ve survived. I’ve done a lot of different things and pretty much 70% of it was on my terms. I never made the great Lounge Lizards record which is really sad to me, but I made a lot of them.

Joe : But even that, people could learn from that. Doing something on your own terms 70% is 50% more than most people can say.

Lurie : I suppose, yeah. And I made it all of this myself. I started my own record company. I made my own TV show, you know what I mean? You don’t need to wait for somebody to come along and give you something. If you need money to do it, then do something else until the money comes. Make something out of popsicle sticks, it doesn’t matter, you know?